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Topic: Getting Married in Hong Kong (Read 11925 times)

Respectfully, I absolutely refuse to spend thousands of yuan to pose in silly clothes and my fiance wants no part of it either. I'm sure when the day actually arrives we'll get her a nice dress and I'll break down and buy a suit and we'll have some photos taken. We don't need pictures of me dressed like a 10th Century emperor with my girl dressed as a courtesan, thank you. Both of us find the whole picture thing an enormous waste of money. We both have cameras and friends who can use them.

Her parents will not attempt an annulment. That doesn't worry me. We'll be able to get this done if the procedure is actually as simple as it appears to be from what I've read. I'm still waiting to hear from anyone who has actually done it.

Equally respectfully, maybe nobody else has ever had to do it. Your circumstances are somewhat untypical.

Believe it or not, you can chose your outfits (the wedding studios will make suggestions, but it's easy to laugh derisively and move on to the next outfit). Courtesan costumes are 100% optional (damn, wish the studio had one to put my wife-to-be into during our photo shoot ). Alternately, get super-high res photos if you want any blown up to 40" across and framed. 5 megapixels isn't really enough for that. Nothing says "we're married" to recalcitrant Chinese family members like your own personal wedding art gallery.

Give it a few days for more answers. Not everyone reads every thread every day. Someone here is bound to know someone who's done a successful marriage run to HK. In the meantime, if that houkou can be had, it's very simple and easy to get married here in Guangdong with no family interference.

Respectfully, I absolutely refuse to spend thousands of yuan to pose in silly clothes and my fiance wants no part of it either. I'm sure when the day actually arrives we'll get her a nice dress and I'll break down and buy a suit and we'll have some photos taken. We don't need pictures of me dressed like a 10th Century emperor with my girl dressed as a courtesan, thank you. Both of us find the whole picture thing an enormous waste of money. We both have cameras and friends who can use them.

Her parents will not attempt an annulment. That doesn't worry me. We'll be able to get this done if the procedure is actually as simple as it appears to be from what I've read. I'm still waiting to hear from anyone who has actually done it.

Equally respectfully, maybe nobody else has ever had to do it. Your circumstances are somewhat untypical.

Your plan will work.

Yes. People are trying to be helpful even though I think it is kind of unlikely that anyone here has ever done a marriage run to Hong Kong. Maybe someone will come along with personal experience, but most of our married members, that I can think of off the top of my head anyhow, got married either in China or their home country.

I have not gotten married in China, but have heard from friends that when going to the US consulate (in Guangzhou) to get the Chinese spouse a visa for the USA, they like to see pictures of the actual wedding, pictures of the past with friends, family, etc. It legitimizes the wedding in their bureaucratic eyes. However, the last two such couples I know did not have any trouble getting the Chinese wife a USA visa, no third degree questionings, just standard stuff.

Consider that to a bureaucrat, a "quick" Las Vegas Hong Kong marriage might possibly be the same as some kind of sham green card marriage, in the eyes of a heartless, Andie-McDowell-hating clipboard jockey that is.

We've been together for years and have a ton of pictures of us together going back to early 2010. I'm kind of weird in that I sometimes have really short hair and at others have allowed it to grow and I also tend to gain and lose weight at regular intervals. Folks will be able to tell we've been together a while. My girlfriend has also changed her hairstyle a few times, at times she's had reddish streaks while at others she has not. Her hair was pretty long when I met her and now it's about ear-length. She's also visibly chubbier than in some of our early pictures. (I spoiled her by getting her a motorbike. She almost never rides her bicycle anymore.) When she is interviewed she'll have no trouble explaining why we chose to marry in Hong Kong. Her English is plenty good enough.

I don't really need to communicate with someone who did a "run" to HK. Anyone who got married in HK will do, even if they married a HK local. I am talking with a girl I know who is from Sichuan but married a HK guy. (Whom she subsequently divorced so she's somewhat reticent about discussing it.)

Err..why don't you just contact the proper authorities in HK and ask them if a Chinese and Non-Chinese can get married there with no problems, spin them some yarn about her thinking HK is the cat's pajamas or some such, dial up the "I-am-a-male-and-all-romance-makes-me-confused-but-I-would-give-her-the-moon" mood and get the lowdown skinny from the bonafide source. You can't be the first laowai who married a non-HK Celestial Daughter in HK. That is what I would do, anyway.

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"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." Oscar Wilde.

Err..why don't you just contact the proper authorities in HK and ask them if a Chinese and Non-Chinese can get married there with no problems, spin them some yarn about her thinking HK is the cat's pajamas or some such, dial up the "I-am-a-male-and-all-romance-makes-me-confused-but-I-would-give-her-the-moon" mood and get the lowdown skinny from the bonafide source. You can't be the first laowai who married a non-HK Celestial Daughter in HK. That is what I would do, anyway.

Actually, I did send an email. In English, of course. Still waiting to hear back from them. It was only yesterday I wrote it.

Okay, I ALMOST got married in Hong Kong, does that count? Since you live in Guangdong my advice is to take a day trip to HK and have a chat with a Civil Celebrant. There is a PDF file of CCMS at http://www.gov.hk/en/residents/immigration/bdmreg/marriage/gettingmarried.htmYou probably already know this, but thought I should share the link anyway. Think you will find it quite easy to get married in HK. We got married in China because we already had the "single certificate" from my consulate, but not a copy of my divorce decree from USA. HK wanted to see the divorce decree, her province did not.

@rongwei Thanks. Helpful stuff there. When I returned to China in 2006 after 2 years at home I actually had plans to marry my former girlfriend. (Thank goodness that never happened...she turned out to be a major nutjob.) With that in mind I actually brought an original copy of my divorce decree with me. Has a nice little gold embossed stamp and everything. Quite impressive.

We're doing this thing with a total lack of sentimentality that will probably appear tacky to the casual observer. We've been living together for 3 years now. I actually didn't even plan to buy wedding rings. Truth is, the pair of us are not really into "marriage" per se. I'm not exactly a libertarian but I find it absurd that the government has to get involved in stuff like this at all but we do live in a society and it has rules and whatnot. If there were any way for me to get my girl to the USA without marrying her I'd certainly do it. And it ain't like being married to a Chinese helps me at all here. The only "privilege" it confers is I can get a multiple entry visa that doesn't even allow me to work. Whoopty-friggin doo.

Actually, now that I think about it, I've been living here since 2008 with totally legal residence permits. (Before that I was only semi-legal and had a series of "F" visas I used "guanxi" to obtain. That ended with the Great Olympic Crackdown of '08.) This July will mark 5 years. I've changed employers twice but the RP was switched to the new one. I never even thought about this. From what I've heard workaday types like foreign teachers are almost never granted a "green card" type thing here. This is the primary reason I'm not concerned at all if the PRC "recognizes" my HK marriage as long as the USA does. I can't exactly blame China for not wanting "immigrants" since it already has a gazillion people to worry about.

There was some stuff in the Chinese press in the past several months about giving more green cards, especially to our kind of gui lo. You might actually be able to get one, perhaps even moreso after the sword fight with the Montagues your marriage .